BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I can’t even mimic Brando at this point…

Not my night? Hell, it ain’t been my week apparently.

If you read my previous blog you know that Momma Nature in all her bitchy glory, sent freezing rain and sleet down upon our heads today. And, as a result, my flight to Detroit was canceled, effectively keeping me from arriving at ConVocation, where I was to sign books, present workshops, and hang out with tons of really cool people.

Well, okay… bad enough… The airline managed to re-book me for a flight early tomorrow morning. All good. Not exactly the most convenient time as far as getting to the airport, etc, but I made the arrangements, left my bags packed and by the door… I was ready.

Well, Mistress Nature is gearing up to give us another ice lashing. She should start in on us again around midnight and continue on through tomorrow evening. Soooooo, in what must have been a preemptive move on the part of the airline, my flight was canceled, yet again…

I just can’t catch a break…

I suppose it was probably a combination of the weather, and accommodating passengers from other flights as well as those already booked prior to all this. Not to mention that for all I know the new flight might have been coming from one of the points East that is now getting beaten by waves 1 and 2 of this storm system.

At any rate, the best they could do is get me to Detroit sometime Saturday. Maybe. If I was lucky, the weather dominatrix sleeps tonight, and if I held my tongue just right while clicking my heels together and saying “There’s no place like Detroit, there’s no place like Detroit…”

I was willing to give that a go, but the problem is this – I would get in sometime Saturday… Maybe morning, maybe afternoon… Maybe even evening… Not really sure. They were shooting for morning, but hey, they were also shooting for today as I recall, and we saw how that turned out… Either way, the event ends by noon on Sunday. So, in essence I would have arrived (maybe) and someone would have had to come pick me up, then get me back to the hotel, check me in, etc, etc… By that time I might be able to mingle for a bit then go to bed, get up, pack, and go to the airport to come home.

The long and short of it… I’m not going to be at ConVocation this year. I’m not happy about it and neither are they. But, we all realize there isn’t much we can do.

So, save your programs. If you see me in the future, I’ll be glad to sign them… Hey, it will be a collectors item. The event I was supposed to be at but never made it to… If you are after one of my books while at the con, they have those there too. Tell Dorothy Morrison I said she could sign them for me.

My next tour date? The Ostara Festival in Harker Heights, Texas… That’s a couple of weeks away yet… Let’s hope the weather bitch is in a better mood by then…

More to come…

Murv

…A stately pleasure dome decree…

(This blog was originally entitled “Two in one day” as a reference to the fact that I had managed to find time to post two blogs in one day. However, the first of the two wasn’t important enough to bother with migrating it here from Myspace, therefore, some obvious editing has been done, but more importantly, the name has been changed to confuse the audience…)

Not a record, but damn close considering how busy I am these days… But, I happen to have a few minutes in between household projects today, and I have a small story to relate…

It all starts with birthdays. Now, in theory (notice I am pointing out IN THEORY) I have one of those coming up. Honestly, I am not all that big on celebrating it. I mean, yeah, as long as I am around to see them that means I’m not dead, but, they really aren’t a big deal to me. I guess it was just the way I grew up. In my family the whole birthday thing pretty much stopped being a big deal when you were about 12. After that, the only hallmarks were the biggies – 16 – driving time. 18 – voting time (and for the boys, registering for selective service). And, finally, 21 – Legal drinking age. Other than that, birthdays were more or less just another day.

HOWEVER, Evil Kat’s family was exactly the opposite. Birthdays are a big deal. They have some manner of compulsive need to celebrate them. Now, it used to be that each and every birthday was celebrated individually with dinner, etc. Nowadays, with everyone being older and having a ton of things to do, scheduling such has become a nightmare. Therefore, in the interest of making it all work they have started doing birthday’s by quarters – i.e. 1 gathering for January – March birthdays, another gathering for April – June birthdays, and so on.

I was hoping that when they got combined it would be easier for mine to get lost in the shuffle. However, it has not. I made some seriously intense attempts at convincing folks that they had my birthdate wrong, with plans to do the same when the bogus date I offered rolled around. The idea was that I would be able to keep them bouncing back and forth so that they would forget it. Unfortunately, EK overheard and sold me out.

So, they know when my birthday really is…

Okay, now let’s add insult to injury. Every year I am asked what I want for my birthday. For some odd reason, “nothing” is not a sufficient answer for these folks. And, as always happens, EK ends up poking and prodding until I give up an answer. I tried tossing really expensive items out there in hopes that they would get the hint, but alas, that didn’t work either… So, in recent years I have finally given in. I have started giving them lists of inexpensive items that I would like to have, but haven’t had time to buy for myself.

(Guess what? I’m not actually to the point of this blog yet… But, you’re used to that by now, I suppose…)

So, last night was the 1st Quarter Birthday Gathering. This year I had supplied a list of DVD’s I wanted to add to my library. For those of you who don’t know this, I tend to collect TV series and movies that have either inspired me, or have some connection to my younger days…Stuff like Millennium, Pretender, The Die Hard Quad, etc… Among the movies on my list this go around was a cult classic, and one that most folks wouldn’t figure as my kind of flick – Xanadu.

Yes, Xanadu. The glitzy, schmaltzy, Olivia Newton-John pop-rock musical fantasy flick about a boy, a girl (actually a mythical goddess), and a roller disco.

Now, I am sure you are asking yourself, “why in the hell would Sellars, of all people, have a movie like Xanadu on his list?”

Well, actually I expected the family to think the same thing. I mean, horror writer guy wants a campy roller disco movie? Doesn’t really make sense, does it? Well, they didn’t bat an eye, so I got myself a Xanadu DVD among my gifts last evening.

But, back to why… There are many reasons…And, they are all relatively simple… Here are just a few…

1) Remember the bit about a connection to my younger days? Well, Xanadu hit the theaters the summer before I went away to college. As it happened, there was a cinema a few miles away that ran it as a matinee – all summer. So, since I often had nothing better to do, I would finish my running around in the outdoor mall then go park myself in the air conditioned cinema with a soda and a hot dog, and watch Xanadu. Admission was something like a buck fifty… Couldn’t beat it.

2) Yeah, but why Xanadu of all movies? Three words and a hyphen. Olivia Newton-John. In my youth, like many other red blooded males, I had it bad for ONJ. A crush of mammoth proportions. I mean, how could you not? That face, that body, those legs, that accent…And she could sing too. What wasn’t to love about the woman? Hell, I can remember spending a small fortune on 10th row floor tickets when she came to Saint Louis on the “Get Physical” tour. I even owned all her albums… For you kids, albums are those big, black, round things with grooves. They are what we dinosaurs had before CD’s. You can see them in museums, and if you are lucky, your parents might even have a few stashed away in a box somewhere.

3) Gene Kelly. Yeah, Gene Kelly is in the movie. And, while he only has a few dance numbers, we are talking about GENE FREAKIN’ KELLY here! He made it look so easy! And, getting to see him dance was a treat.

4) The music… Yeah, some of it is pop, glitzy, disco stuff…But, remember that was a part of that era. ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) and Jeff Lynne did quite a bit of the music. I happen to be an ELO fan.

5) ONJ’s character is a Muse. As in the Greek Goddess… Daughter of Zeus…all that jazz. Now how cool is that? I mean, she’s exactly what I would have wanted my muse to look like back then… These days, well, my muse is a redhead and she dresses a bit differently, but we won’t go there…

Anyway, those are just a few of the reasons…And, because of them, Xanadu has pretty much stuck out in my mind for years. Now, I heard that it had been redone as a Broadway type musical, and even saw some clips from that. Honestly, I think they hauled off and took a completely wonderful, campy, movie and totally ruined. However, there is still the original on DVD.

Which finally brings me to the point of this blog. I’ve been busier than hell and haven’t been able to spend much time with my family as of late. So, today, in between loads of laundry I took a couple of hours to hang with the munchkin’ now that she’s feeling better and over her stomach flu (I was hanging with her when she was sick, but that really wasn’t quality time if you know what I mean.) Anyway, we decided we would open up Xanadu and give it a watch, since with her being 8 she had never seen it, and it had been years since I had watch it as well. I fully expected her to enjoy the movie because she is all about music, dancing, and that sort of jazz.

And, she did.

What I didn’t expect, however, was that when the movie was over she burst into tears. I had no idea what was wrong, until she sobbed “that was beautiful”…

When I thought about it, I realized she was correct. And, maybe that was a hidden allure of Xanadu all along. Boy meets goddess, boy loses goddess, boy stands up goddess’ dad to get goddess back, and in the end, he does.

Who wouldn’t love a story like that?

More to come…

Murv